It’s Not Ferraro Dividing The Party

From the looks of the news over the Geraldine Ferraro – Barack Obama flap, I’m feeling that there’s a whole lot of race going on and it isn’t being perpetrated by Ferraro when she said this . . .

If Obama was a white man, he would not be in this position. And if he was a woman, he would not be in this position. He happens to be very lucky to be who he is. And the country is caught up in the concept.

I agree with Obama when he said that he did not take that as a racist remark. I didn’t see it that way either. It was an opinion of all the dynamics at work in a Presidential election where there is a woman and black for the first time in American history. What is distressing is the extent to which the media is running a racist angle on the story.

For the woman’s part, Ferraro has been there, done that. For the black’s part, Barack is there today. What Ferraro said was exactly right. If Barack was white, he would have been in the also-ran line with Dennis Kucinich long ago. But he is Black. He’s a handsome guy, he gives good speeches, is inspirational and, according to Joe Biden (D-DE), he is clean. In this case, the fact that he has not yet finished his first term in the Senate, has no executive experience outside of organizing neighborhood projects, seem to have no bearing on his qualifications to be President and Commander in Chief, during a war. If he would have been white, he’d be outta there. But the media apparently can not recognize that fact. Is it because they want to pick the candidate on the Democrat side of the ticket as well?

Obama’s response is clever, but shows his inability to deal with what she said. He instead attempts to tell her, and you and I, what we can and can not talk about.

“Part of what I think Geraldine Ferraro is doing, and I respect the fact that she was a trailblazer, is to participate in the kind of slice and dice politics that’s about race and about gender and about this and that, and that’s what Americans are tired of because they recognize that when we divide ourselves in that way we can’t solve problems,” Obama said on NBC’s “Today” show.

Let’s see if I understand this. Americans are tired of the race and gender politics? Oh, I thought there were record number turnouts in voting in the Democratic primaries. To the contrary, Americans are very interested in it. It isn’t Geraldine Ferraro who is dividing the Democratic party. This woman vs black issue is exposing the Democratic party in the same way that illegal immigration revealed the Republican party fissure between conservatives and Republicans.

All in all, Obama’s attempt to squelch speech by saying what you should not talk about, and to use it to accuse her of trying to divide the Democratic party, exposes his amateur, not presidential, abilities.